1st Edition

Victorian Literature Criticism and Debates

Edited By Lee Behlman, Anne Longmuir Copyright 2016
    472 Pages
    by Routledge

    472 Pages
    by Routledge

    Victorian Literature: Criticism and Debates offers a comprehensive and critically engaging introduction to the study of Victorian literature and addresses the most popular and vibrant topics in the field today.

    Separated into twelve sections, this anthology investigates issues as diverse as neo-formalism, sensationalism, religion, evolution, psychology, gender and sexuality, colonialism, imperialism, and economics. Each section contains at least three classic essays from leading scholars which offer a variety of approaches and theories from the liveliest areas of current criticism and debate in the field. Each section concludes with a newly written essay from a subject expert that reflects on this work and looks forward to new directions. A sign-posted introduction to the key critical contributions in Victorian studies from the past twenty-five years sets the reader on their path.

    Providing both the essential criticism along with clear introductions and analysis, this book is the perfect guide for students and scholars of Victorian literature.

    General Introduction, Anne Longmuir and Lee Behlman

    Part 1. Victorian Poetry and Form

    Introduction

    1. Rereading Victorian Poetry, Isobel Armstrong

    2. The Fix of Form: an Open Letter, Herbert F. Tucker

    3. Physiological Poetics; Patmore, Hopkins and the Uncertain Body of Victorian Poetry, Jason R. Rudy

    4. Victorian Poetry and Form, Charles LaPorte

    Part 2. Women Poets and the Poetess Tradition

    Introduction

    5. Canonization through Dispossession: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the "Pythian Shriek," Tricia Lootens

    6. Rewriting a History of the Lyre: Letitia Landon, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the (Re)construction of the Nineteenth-Century Woman Poet, Linda H. Peterson

    7. Atheist Prophecy: Mathilde Blinde, Constance Naden, and the Victorian Poetess, Charles LaPorte

    8. Women Poets and the Poetess Tradition, Linda K. Hughes

    Part 3. Realism and Photography

    Introduction

    9. What is Real in Realism?, Nancy Armstrong

    10. Information Unveiled, Richard Menke

    11. Composing the Novel Body: Re-Membering the Body and the Text in Little Dorrit, Daniel Novak

    12. Realism and Photography, Jennifer Green-Lewis

    Part 4. Genre Fiction and the Sensational

    Introduction

    13. Marketing Affect: The Nineteenth-Century Sensation Novel, Ann Cvetkovich

    14. The Abhuman; Chaotic Bodies, Kelly Hurley

    15. Toward a Sensational Theory of Criticism; Sensation fiction Theorizes Masochism, Anna Maria Jones

    16. Genre fiction and the Sensational, Pamela K. Gilbert

    Part 5. Religion and Literature

    Introduction

    17. Christina Rossetti and the Doctrine of Reserve, Emma Mason

    18. Orthodox Narratives of Literary Sacralization, William R. McKelvy

    19. Sacrifice and the Sufferings of the Substitute: Dickens and the Atonement Controversy of the 1850s, Jan-Melissa Schramm

    20. Religion and Literature, Mark Knight

    Part 6. Darwin and Victorian Culture

    Introduction

    21. The Remnant of the Mythical; Fit and Misfitting: Anthropomorphism and the Natural Order, Gillian Beer

    22. Dickens and Darwin, George Levine

    23. Conversation on Creation, James Secord

    24. Darwinian Science and Victorian Respectability, Gowan Dawson

    25. Darwin and Victorian Culture, Jonathan Smith

    Part 7. Psychology and Literature

    Introduction

    26. Villette: "the Surveillance of a Sleepless Eye," Sally Shuttleworth

    27. The Discourse of Physiology in General Biology, Rick Rylance

    28. The Psyche in Pain; Dream and trance: Gaskell’s North and South as a "Condition of Consciousness" Novel, Jill Matus

    29. Psychology and Literature, Michael Davis

    Part 8. Gender, Sexuality, Domesticity

    Introduction

    30. The Female Relations of Victorian England, Sharon Marcus

    31. The Curious Princess, the Novel, and the Law, Hilary M. Schor

    32. Revelation in the Divorce Court, Deborah Cohen

    33. Gender, Sexuality, Domesticity, Melissa Valiska Gregory

    Part 9. Disinterestedness and Liberalism

    Introduction

    34. Forms of Detachment, Amanda Anderson

    35. Is there a Pastor in the House? Sanitary Reform and Governing Agency in Dickens’s Midcentury Fiction, Lauren M. E. Goodlad

    36. A Frame of Mind: Signature Liberalism at the Fortnightly Review, Elaine Hadley

    37. Disinterestedness and Liberalism, Daniel S. Malachuk

    Part 10. Imperialism and Literature in the Age of Colonialism

    Introduction

    38. Introduction to Kim, Edward Said

    39. Imperial Gothic: Atavism and the Occult in the British Adventure Novel, 1880-1914, Patrick Brantlinger

    40. Missionary men and Morant Bay 1859-1866, Catherine Hall

    41. Fantasy and Ideology, John Kucich

    42. Imperialism and Literature in the Age of Colonialism, Muireann O'Cinneide

    Part 11. Economics, the Market, and Victorian Culture

    Introduction

    43. Daniel Deronda and the Afterlife of Ownership, Jeff Nunokawa

    44. The Bioeconomics of Our Mutual Friend, Catherine Gallagher

    45. Literary Appropriations, Mary Poovey

    46. Economics, the Market, and Victorian Culture, Jill Rappoport

    Part 12. Print Culture

    Introduction

    47. The Advantage of Fiction: the Novel and the "Success" of the Victorian Periodical, Laurel Brake

    48. The Age of Newspapers, Matthew Rubery

    49. The Book as Go-Between: Domestic Service and Forced Reading, Leah Price

    50. Print Culture, Jennifer Phegley

    Biography

    Lee Behlman is Assistant Professor of English at Montclair State University, USA.

    Anne Longmuir is Associate Professor of English at Kansas State University, USA.